[originaltext] In 1985 a French television company sent its reporters to the

In 1985 a French television company sent its reporters to the Paris Metro. They took cameras to see what passengers would do if they saw someone attacked on the platform or trains. The incidents looked real but they were all done with the help of actors. However, very few people tried to help, and most passengers pretended not to notice. In one incident, a foreigner was attacked by three men. The attack was on a train which was quite full, and although one man tried to get the other passengers to help, they all refused. This is not only a French problem. A British newspaper reported in 1991 that a professor of Social Psychology in New York had sent his students out to rob their own cars. The students didn’t try to hide what they were doing. About 800 people watched 250 car thefts, and only twelve people tried to stop the student robbers. In a typical incident, one man stopped, looked, and then put his hands over his eyes and shouted" I didn’t see that!" About forty people offered to help the thieves, and two people actually sat down next to the car and waited to buy a camera and television set a student was taking from the back seat of his own ear. The professor wonders whether it’s a problem of big cities, or would the same thing happen anywhere.